“And you, sons of Vulcan, get up lots of ox-chains, strong enough to support these boxes with a thousand pounds in each.”
“A thousand pounds, in sovereigns, will weigh more than the same amount in five-pun notes,” said the boss blacksmith, musingly. “Does Your Majesty pay gold or paper?”
“A thousand pounds avoirdupois, you idiot,” replied the King. The blacksmith apologized, and whispered to his neighbor that he thought it would turn out so, as the King was hard up, and couldn’t raise five hundred guineas in a month unless he stole them.
The boxes were made, and the ferblantiers and charpentiers wondered what the king could be about. When they were ready,
he put a dozen infantry men with plenty of carbines and revolvers and supplies of provisions and ammunition into each box, and lowered the whole lot of them simultaneously down the face of the cliff above the canals. Thus the soldiers were enabled to make it nasty for the robbers. They killed most of them, and what they didn’t kill they flung over the face of the precipice.